A young girl blamed her sister for her mother’s murder because she told her father, who stands charged with the killing, of the woman’s whereabouts the night she died, a court heard yesterday.

The heart-wrenching details emerged as the girls’ grandmother, Tessie Mifsud, took to the witness stand against Nizar El Gadi, 34, who is pleading not guilty to murdering 31-year-old Margaret Mifsud in April.

Ms Mifsud said that the girls, aged eight and nine, were talking to their father on Skype when he threatened the younger one to force her to tell him where their mother was going that night.

Following the murder, she overheard the older girl tell her sister that she was to blame for her mother’s death because she told Mr El Gadi where Margaret Mifsud would be.

In a three-hour long testimony, Ms Mifsud emphatically listed the arrogant behaviour and violence that her daughter was exposed to during her tumultuous marriage, which lasted six years before they split.

Being a lawyer and having to deal with separation proceedings, Margaret Mifsud tried to keep the family together and not end up like many of her clients, her mother testified.

Tessie Mifsud said she disliked Mr El Gadi from the moment she saw him. She described him as an unsavoury character who wanted to impress with money he did not have and with a love of designer clothes.

He was “crafty”, never put a hand on Margaret Mifsud in front of her mother, and was always belittling her because it bothered him that she had an education and was a lawyer.

When the couple married, they lived with Tessie Mifsud and the Libyan was consistently arrogant. She would hear him order her around and despite telling Margaret to put her foot down, her daughter’s response was always to calmly handle the situation so as not to upset the children, her mother said.

Sporadically recounting one incident after the next, Ms Mifsud recalled she caught Mr El Gadi punishing his eldest daughter by sitting on her head.

As Ms Mifsud took a break to sip some water, she said: “He tried to fool everyone but could not fool God and eventually the devil fooled him because he was caught.”

As she continued her testimony, Police Inspector Keith Arnaud asked her about a specific incident in which she claimed he tried to strangle Margaret, which was the subject of another court case against Mr El Gadi.

She said Margaret told her that on the day in question, he walked into the house, told her to shut the doors and windows and ordered her into the living room. He told her to kneel down and rest against the sofa, then stood behind her before he violently wound a cord around her neck and told her to make a choice between “her life or the children’s lives”, Ms Mifsud said.

She told her mother that she prayed to God to forgive any sins and take her peacefully. Angry and frustrated at how her daughter did not fight back, Ms Mifsud said she then took her daughter straight to the police station to file a report.

Ms Mifsud said she could remember how at the beginning of the marriage, Mr El Gadi told her he used to train with Muammar Gaddafi’s soldiers and knew how to kill someone without leaving a trace.

At the time she thought he was just joking around and never gave it another thought until her daughter was found dead without a sign of violence on her.

The case continues.

Ms Mifsud is expected to continue to testify in the next sitting in two weeks time.